Posts Tagged ‘national weather service’
Tuesday’s Storms, What Happened?
- Published on Wednesday, 22 May 2013 09:06
- Conley Isom
- 25 Comments
After the Oklahoma tornadoes in previous days, many of us were on edge for severe weather on Tuesday. The ingredients were in place for a significant event. The models were showing lots of energy in the atmosphere, lots of spin for tornadic storms, and the right combination of surface fronts and upper level energy. The language from several different National Weather Service offices was strong, something you don’t see everyday. But in the end, not one tornado was confirmed. The dots on the map above are hail and wind reports for Tuesday.
We are very thankful that the tornado threat never materialized! There were a couple of tornado warnings north of Houston, but nothing confirmed. However, the storms still packed a punch. We had numerous wind and hail reports in the DFW area, in Bell county, east Texas, and southeast Texas from Lufkin south to Houston. There was also lots of lightning that sadly killed an IHOP employee in Lufkin. So remember, it is not just tornadoes that kill. Any kind of severe weather needs to be taken seriously.
So why no tornadoes? The image above is from Tuesday morning when the Tornado Watch was issued. Notice the area of thunderstorms north of Abilene to Wichita Falls. These storms put out an outflow boundary, or cool air rushing out ahead of storms. Think of it as a mini cold front. This boundary continued moving southeast towards DFW and Central Texas. It would help develop storms, but would quickly undercut them, shutting off the warm and humid air needed for really strong storms. Even when we had an isolated storm north of of Austin that began rotating, the cold air from the outflow boundary kept it from producing a tornado. Eventually, this lead to a line of storms that were behind the boundary and in cooler air, marching east across the state.
This explanation may seem familiar. This spring season, we have had many late season cold fronts that lead to record cold back in April. Those cold fronts, at least the ones that brought us rain, had a chance for severe weather but tended to not be as bad as predicted. Why? Because the cold fronts would undercut the storms. In the case of the Oklahoma tornadoes, there was no cold front diving south and no morning storms. Just a dry line line, heating of the atmosphere, and deadly tornadoes.
Again, we are thankful that we did not see the death and destruction seen in Oklahoma. I think that event had many scared about what could happen. It is ok to be scared but best to be prepared. Take the time to have a plan of action in case severe weather strikes your home and city. Have a weather radio or another means of receiving severe weather alerts. Never depend on outdoor sirens. If you live in a mobile home, find a nearby structure like a gas station or store. Never ride out a tornado in a mobile home. Never climb under an overpass or bridge. For brick homes, a bathroom or interior hallway is your best place to seek shelter. Cover yourself with pillows and blankets. If you have bike or sports helmets, those are good to wear. That saved mane lives in Oklahoma.
Click here to learn more about severe weather safety!
If you need help coming up with a plan or have questions, please ask. We will do our best to get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks to everyone for supporting us! Your pictures, videos, and weather reports help out a lot so keep them coming! We also ask you continue to keep those in Oklahoma in our thoughts and prayers.
Morning Update – Damage Surveys Today – Mild Weather Expected For Affected Areas
- Published on Thursday, 16 May 2013 07:52
- Jenny Brown
- 34 Comments
Preliminary count of tornados from yesterday’s storms is 10. The National Weather Service will conduct damage surveys today in Hood, Johnson, Montague and Parker counties. Tornados are rated based on the damage they cause, not by any sort of estimated wind speed, so we will not know the exact nature of each storm, its path and rating until surveys are completed later today. Thankfully, the weather today is expected to cooperate in Hood and Jonson counties, the hardest hit areas, so cleanup and damage assessments should not be impacted by continued severe weather. We do have a chance at storms redeveloping this afternoon; however, they are expected to occur in areas north and east of the DFW metro area or well south of DFW. Confidence in the exact timing and location of additional storms today is not 100%, so further updates will be forthcoming. Forecasted highs today in the areas affected by yesterday’s tornados is expected to be in the upper 80′s to low 90′s with breezy conditions. David returned to Texas overnight and will also be traveling out to the damage zones and will provide updates on what he sees later today. Our heartfelt prayers continue to go out to all those who were affected by yesterday’s storms.
Graphic below courtesy of the National Weather Service office in Ft. Worth
Chasing the 1970 Lubbock, TX F5 Tornado
- Published on Saturday, 11 May 2013 18:52
- David Drummond
- 18 Comments
Image: City of Lubbock
DISCLAIMER: This is a fictional piece, written from the point of view of myself, as a storm chaser. The event was very real. The storm chasing part of it is fiction. This is how it might have played out if I were old enough then to be storm chasing (I wasn’t quite 4 years old yet), based on the actual event timeline from the National Weather Service. I was very aware of the event, living near Lubbock though, as everyone talked about it for a long time. I wouldn’t chase my first storms for another 14 years. What follows may have been my chase account from that day.
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After an early morning visit to the Lubbock Weather Bureau Office (what the National Weather Service used to be called), I learned that Severe Local Storms Unit (SELS, now the Storm Prediction Center (SPC)) has issued a convective outlook that included “Isolated thunderstorms with large hail expected in High Plains of West Texas east of Pecos late afternoon and early evening.” Yes, today would be a chase day! Little did I know what was coming…
Went and had lunch at BB’s hamburger joint down on 4th street (some of the best burgers around!), and decided to go ahead and top the gas off in my old 1966 Dodge Charger. She wasn’t much to look at, what with all the hail dents from previous storms and all, but she made a reliable chase vehicle. Wish I could afford one of those new 1970 Chargers, man those are sharp! Speaking of affording things, wow, gas went up to 36 cents a gallon today. It’s getting so expensive to fill this car up, that cost nearly $5.00 to fill up at the Texaco. I may have to cut back on my chasing a bit.
Decided to head back over to the Weather Bureau to see what the latest was. I sure wish they were closer in to town, I hate having to drive all the way out to the airport. SELS had sent down word that the air mass in the high country of West Texas was unstable, and we should be watching for storms. Being a storm chaser, of course that was music to my ears, even though it felt pretty dry out there, dewpoints were only in the 40s and it was getting a bit hot and already 90 degrees! Yeah, the moisture is east of Lubbock I think, maybe I’ll head out toward Crosbyton. These southwest dry winds here in Lubbock just aren’t going to cut it, I need to get out east into the moisture or I’m going to be playing catch-up all day.
By the time I got to the east side of Lubbock though, the winds shifted back to the southeast with that distinct smell of moisture on the South Plains. Hmmm, the dryline is retreating? Maybe I’ll stay put right here, so I stopped just outside of Lubbock on US62/82 on the northeast side of Lubbock. Already, a nice cumulus field was beginning to form.
After sitting around for a couple hours trying to conserve gas and mostly being bored and starting to think today was going to be a bust chase, I noticed we were finally starting to get some towering CU. It’s about time too, because it’s nearly 6 o’clock, and there is only a couple hours of daylight left.
I decided to head south down toward Slaton. One of the towering CU there is really getting it’s act together, I think that might be my storm for the day! In fact, by the time I got in position, we were finally starting to get some decent CGs (cloud-to-ground lightning) out of that cell, yep, this was a good move on my part.
About 7:45pm KFYO was talking over the AM radio about my storm now. Evidently an alert for a moderate thunderstorm has been issued. This was my storm! I decided to head on back toward Lubbock and head around the east Loop 289 so I could stay east of the storm. I didn’t get too far though before golf ball sized hail started falling, but what the heck, I already had plenty of hail dents. They were now announcing a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for my storm, here about 8 o’clock.
I made it around to 50th and the Loop when I spotted the first funnel cloud coming down off to my west. It happened really quick and went from rain free base, to wall cloud, to funnel in a very short time! This is not good, the storm is still over Lubbock! It was kind of intermittent though and remained aloft, so at least that was some good news, but now I was getting pounded by baseball sized hail wrapping around the rotation in the cloud base. Just great! Another windshield busted!
Just as the sun was going down (and it always gets darker, earlier, under a thunderstorm), the funnel cloud finally touched down just to my west, couldn’t have been more than couple miles at most. I was already hearing Tornado Warnings being announced by KFYO, so at least people are getting some warning. Man, I really wished I had a way to call in a report. That’s it, I’m not procrastinating any more, I’m going to get me one of those fancy ham radios and take the test so I can be an official weather observer.
This tornado is moving east it looks like, maybe northeast, but it’s definitely coming in my direction. I keep pace with it as it crossed over Loop 289, right where I had been sitting earlier in the afternoon. It crossed just a few blocks in front of me and debris was going everywhere. I sure hope no one got hurt! I had to head out east 4th street to stay with it, there was just too much debris blocking the way. It was beginning to rope out now, and my attention was being drawn to the southwest.
I’m not sure if the storm is back-building or not. I kept noticing cells build to the southwest, then they seemed to get absorbed into the main storm. The tornado had finally dissipated now as it moved out into the rural areas, but a new, even larger wall cloud had formed back to the southwest of the old one. This was rather strange, they usually form upstream, to the east or northeast of the old one, I’m really confused about what is going on now. But, I need to get back to the new one, so I head back to the Loop and head south again.
I cut west on 19th street and got back to Quirt (modern day Martin Luther King Blvd). It’s really dark here, power is out in this whole area from the previous tornado. I spotted quite a few power lines down and some roofs blown off in this area, but overall it didn’t look as bad as I thought it was going to be.
By now the large wall cloud just to my southwest could be seeing in the frequent lightning. It’s dark now and hard to see and I’m getting pretty nervous, still a bit shaken up from the tornado that had just happened.
It was about 9:35 when I first saw the tornado. This one was even bigger than the previous one. I didn’t see it at first in the lightning, but lit up by power flashes as it was tearing up power lines. This is bad, really bad. It’s come down right in the heart of Lubbock. You never want to see this as a storm chaser, and yet there it is, and I’m helpless to do anything about it.
I just sat there and watched as power flashes continued and between them and the lightning you could see a significant debris field around the bottom of the tornado. The sirens were sounding too, I sure hope everyone managed to get in the cellar! I was noticing larger and larger areas blacking out as the power lines were getting ripped up. It was almost completely dark now aside from the lightning! The tornado is a huge wedge shape. It must be a mile wide or more! What a scary sight!
It appeared to not be getting in closer to me, so I decided it was heading more north, and I went north on Quirt to keep up with it. I started getting pelted by more really large hail and some smaller debris wrapping around the back side of the tornado.
I was still able to keep up with it until I was stopped by debris just north of Loop 289. I was losing sight of it now, it seemed to have rain all around it. It was heading in the direction of the airport last I saw it. I was worried about my weather friends at the Weather Bureau. I later learned their office was hit.
Every place I tried to go west was blocked with debris, so I ended backtracking down Quirt and heading west on Broadway, but as soon as I got near downtown I realized just how bad it was. The only lights were a few car headlights, power was out all over, and you could only see the eerie destruction in the lightning. It was the worst thing I had ever experienced. Ended up spending all night helping out where I could, but I still really didn’t realize the extent of it until the sun came up the next morning.
A tornado scientist I had heard about in the news, Dr. Ted Fujita came to town after the tornado to study it. He later put out this map of the two tornadoes. I’ve drawn my chase path on the map.
I don’t know if I’ll ever chase again. I wasn’t prepared mentally or emotionally for this. I used to enjoy seeing tornadoes out in the fields, but I never saw anything happen like this before. I later learned that 10,000 cars were destroyed, 119 planes at the airport torn up, 250 businesses damaged or destroyed, and 8,800 houses damaged, of which 440 destroyed. Over 1500 people got hurt, and 26 people died. Dr. Fujita ended up rating this tornado an F5 on his new Fujita Scale, the strongest possible.
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DISCLAIMER: The above was a fictional chase account, from the perspective of a storm chaser, had I been chasing that storm. The event and timeline are real, I just told the story, how imagined I would have chased it, if had I been old enough, and been storm chasing back then, based on the timeline available from the National Weather Service. I hope you’ve enjoyed my different take on this story.
To learn more about the event, and to read REAL stories of the people that lived through this event, please visit: http://www.lubbocktornado1970.com
If your interested in the meteorology of the event, check out this site from the National Weather Service Office in Lubbock, TX http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lub/?n=events-1970-19700511
The Lubbock Avalanche Journal has some photo galleries online from the event. Being after dark, and the lack widespread photography and video equipment in those days, so far no photos or video of the tornadoes have surfaced to date that I can find.
Severe Weather Across Central Texas Early Today and Northwest Texas This Afternoon
- Published on Thursday, 09 May 2013 07:44
- Jenny Brown
- 0 Comments
Good morning and happy Thursday everyone! Here’s what we have going on today weather-wise. The Storm Prediction Center has placed a Standard Risk of severe weather across a large portion of the state with an elevated risk of very large hail across the area highlighted in red on the graphic below. Severe weather is quite likely across portions of central Texas from the Big Country up to just south of the DFW metro area during the early part of today. Another round of severe weather expected along the dryline in northwest Texas this afternoon during peak daytime heating. Storms have already begun firing just east of San Angelo and will continue to increase in coverage, spreading northeast across central Texas throughout the morning hours and into the early afternoon. Again, very large hail and damaging winds are the highest threats with any of the storms that develop across central Texas today, and across northwestern parts of the state later this afternoon. We will continue to keep you updated as the day progresses!
Forecast graphic below courtesy of the National Weather Service office in Ft. Worth
Today’s Weather – Tuesday, May 7th
- Published on Tuesday, 07 May 2013 05:03
- Jenny Brown
- 0 Comments
Good morning and happy Tuesday everyone! Here’s an overview of what to expect today weather-wise. Nothing too exciting, just warming up nicely with temps more typical of this time of year. Slight chances of rain and storms again this afternoon/evening across the panhandle region. Widespread severe weather is not expected, but a few cells that form later this evening and into the early night time hours could become severe with hail and damaging winds being the main two threats. There is also a slight chance of some showers/storms across deep south Texas later this afternoon as well. Nothing severe expected, just isolated spots of rain, possibly heavy at times with some of the stronger cells. Everywhere else, just warm and rain-free for the day!
Below is a graphic courtesy of the National Weather Service office in Lubbock regarding the potential for storms in the panhandle region this evening and towards northwest Texas on Wednesday. For more on Wednesday’s severe storm potential, zip down to the bottom of the blog.
Here’s a look at the highs expected today and lows expected overnight:
Increasing Severe Threat Tomorow (Wednesday) – The Storm Prediction Center has placed a portion of northwest Texas under a Standard Risk for severe weather. A line of widely-scattered to isolated severe storms is expected to develop Wednesday evening near the dryline as it sets up in that area tomorrow afternoon. The main threat with these storms will be very large hail up to the size of baseballs, with damaging winds being a threat later during the period. The tornado threat is low, but cannot be completely ruled out. We’ll have more out on Wednesday’s storm chances later this afternoon/evening! Have a great day everyone!
National Radar Composite
Rain Totals: Next 7 Days
By Evan Headley
By Tina Gage Leatherwood
By Darlene Richter Prutzman
By Darlene Richter Prutzman
By BreeAnn Talley